Ron Paul: ‘End Torture, Shut Down The CIA!’

Former congressman and libertarian leader Ron Paul is calling for the abolishment of the CIA, citing “horrific torture practices” and interrogation policies that have been continuously denied by the government while creating “unprecedented” international resentment toward the U.S. (Getty Images)

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WASHINGTON (CBS DC) — Former congressman and libertarian leader Ron Paul is calling for the abolishment of the CIA, citing “horrific torture practices” and interrogation policies that have been continuously denied by the government while creating “unprecedented” international resentment toward the U.S.

The retired Texas representative says that the Obama administration is continuing the torture practices that former President George W. Bush and former CIA director George Tenet have been denying since 2007. Preferring to call the torture practices “enhanced interrogation,” Paul writes in his latest Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity post that the CIA and its covert actions need to come to an end.

“CIA covert actions across the globe have led to destruction of countries and societies and unprecedented resentment toward the United States,” Paul wrote on Sunday. “For our own safety, end the CIA!”

Paul noted that the U.S. government continues to defer blame on torture practices and the recent European Court of Human Rights’ recent finding that the government “transferred individuals to secret detention centers in Poland (and likely elsewhere) where they were tortured away from public scrutiny. The government of Poland was ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to two victims for doing nothing to stop their torture on Polish soil.”

He made the “tragic” historical comparison that the Nazis maintained the Auschwitz concentration camp on the same Polish soil just 70 years before. He stressed that although Tenet and Bush denied the practices in the past, the Obama administration has likely done little but cover up such “enhanced interrogation.”

“The Obama administration refuses to admit that such facilities existed and instead claims that any such ‘enhanced interrogation’ programs were shut down by 2009. We can only hope this is true, but we should be wary of government promises. After all, they promised us all along that they were not using torture, and we might have never known had photographs and other information not been leaked to the press,” Paul wrote.

The CIA is only the latest federal agency on Paul’s abolishment wish list: The Federal Reserve, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Transportation Security Administration have all been called to end by the libertarian-minded Republican.

“Revelations of U.S. secret torture sites overseas and a new Senate investigation revealing widespread horrific CIA torture practices should finally lead to the abolishment of this agency,” concluded Paul.